Thursday, December 30, 2010

Iced coconut drink with coloured syrup. And that syrup, apparently - is flavourless.

I had assumed it to be pandan. Guess I'm wrong.

Hot honey lemon

Nursing a cold that afternoon so I tried this popular remedy drink. A bit of a cliché, I know. But one can't help trying.

Well, they were too liberal with the honey, here. The whole concoction became this thick, gooey and uber sweet drink as a result. Didn't finish it.

Could have asked for a glass of water to dilute it but they used the wrong type of honey (the whitish/opaque type) to start with, so I just didn't bother.

Char-grilled salmon fillet

My colleagues's order. Comes with basil/garlic cream sauce.

I had a small bite and I like it. Seemed like it's cooked with the meat still remaining pink in the center, therefore it still remain moist. And the sauce complement it well.

Most importantly, no fishy smell.

She choose the side salad and fries. Boy are they generous with their fries!

The 'Massive' burger

Seemed like the Botak Jones burger is pretty famous. So I wanna give it a try.

I wanted some cheese so I choose to add on the cheddar slices (2 nos.) for an additional $1. The 'Massive Cheese' burger would have been too much, what with its FOUR slices of cheese.

Maybe I was feeling a lil' guilty for ordering such a large burger so I have veggies for BOTH my side dishes. The side salad and the daily vegetable (french beans + carrot). Those plus the greens in my burger, I feel almost healthy already.

The 'Massive' burger patty

This one here has a 220gm patty and that is reflected its large circumference. The thickness remained constant. I had hoped for that proportion to be reflected in the patty's thickness instead, so that it will be really juicy down the center. Besides, this patty seemed a little too... streamlined, for the 'handmade' look. I had expected something more 'rugged-looking' with that catchy name.

Guess it's no surprise that it does seem a lil' dry... But overall the burger is ok. No patty can be drier than McD, I guess.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Brought my family here this time. We've always wanted to patronise this place since its Ang Mo Kio days. Now that it's nearby, I just took the chance when we were heading for Parkway Parade.

Was surprised when my mum chose the ribs. Then again, she's always been the adventurous eater and must have been intrigued by my constant reviews on them.

Ribs & chips - $12.50

I asked if she wanna have any of the salads and she flatly refused. Guess she's afraid that the ribs portion may be too big for her to have many sides so she settled simply for the chips (fries).

Needless to say, she LOVE them ribs. Kept raving about the marinade sauce and how tender the lamb meat was. And how the meat wasn't that gamey.

Roast beef + 3 salads - $14.50

Roast beef is only available on weekends and public holidays. I went there one Saturday and naturally, I got curious as to how a roast beef taste like and ordered a set.

BIG mistake.

Man, I should have expected it. Usually the whole rump of beef is cooked beforehand and we'll be served slices from that. Since I came late that afternoon, well, not surprisingly, my roast beef was served to me - cold.

If there's one thing I really dislike; it is cooked meat that's already cold.

If the temperature doesn't cheese me off enough, it's a lil' tough to the bite too. And that brown sauce tasted a tad starchy. Geez, now I'm sounding like a bad case of sour grapes.

For the 3 side salads, I picked my favourite, Caesar. Ordered the chicken avocado my colleague had previously, but this time I was served more of the farfalle pasta instead of the chicken. The seafood salad is alright but the big chunks of surimi-'crabmeat' pieces got a tad cloying after a while. Love the fresh prawns, though.

Sampler plate - $15.60

I was recommending this and that to my hubby and he remained quiet until the point of ordering.

When he ordered the sampler platter, I can't help remarking, "Wise guy." It's smart of him to order this, for his first time here, at a place selling most of his favourite foods.

This platter has 1/2 the portion of lamb ribs, 1/4 Charcos (herb) chicken & 1/4 Portugese (spicy) chicken. It's supposed to come with their creamy potato side dish but that ran out so I have the option to choose for him; 2 different salads instead of just 1. Got him his favourite coleslaw + egg salad.

Finally got to try the Portuguese roasted chicken and it does have some spicy kick to it, though a tad subtle. The skin, as you can see, is roasted till it's slightly crispy.

Chicken Kebab + 3 salads - $10.50

My dad seemed disinterested and simply asked for chicken kebab. Maybe he knows that grandchild (my baby) of his may make him unable to focus on his food.

The kebab seemed a lil' on the... thin side. Could do with a lil' more meat, me thinks.

Ordered for him the 3 salads that I've ordered previously. Caesar, Greek & potato. I think he find the latter to be a tad bland and left behind almost half of it. :P
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Now I know what I should avoid ordering when I'm here. I also saw someone from the next table ordering the fish & chips and it looked really enticing. I also want to know what the chicken schnitzel is like. Or the creamy potato.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

I didn't really plan to have a party for my son's 1 year-old birthday. Logically, the baby knows absolutely nothing about this celebration held in his honour so what's the point, right?

Then I think that I may need to get my family involved, seeing it's their first & only grandchild, after all. And my bro wanna see his only nephew cutting his 1st birthday cake.

So I thought of ordering pizza and some fried chicken. Until, my dad informed me that my dear aunt, the 'aspiring confectioner', wanna 'sponsor' some buns for the celebrations. Oh, wow!

We often bring my baby to her place, so she totally adore him. Guess it's his blessing, then. :)))

The spread

'Pizza' buns

My in-laws all remarked that this bun looks 'professionally done' and not like it's from the hands of an amateur.

With chicken hot dogs.

Mini pizzaz

Fist time I saw her making these. Maybe she got inspired by stuff offered in the various Halal bakeries at Jusco Tebrau City (JB).

With chicken ham.

Raisin buns

Looking at these, maybe I wanna encourage her to try making cinnamon rolls. Hmm...

Cheese buns

My favourite amongst all. Yum!

Looking at all these buns makes me wanna troop down to the nearest bakery, pronto. I just can't get enough!

Fried chicken drumsticks

My mum made no mention about bringing fried chicken so I had called up Arnold's Fried Chicken and have them deliver their Party Combo or something. However, they had suspended deliveries at that time, due to bad weather.

I was disappointed initially, for I know just how many fried chicken lovers will be in attendance. Image how relieved I was when I saw these. Relieved also that the delivery order fell through. Imagine the abundance of fried chicken! Guess things happen for a reason, eh?

These store-bought, pre-marinated & battered drumsticks are ingeniously butterflied so that the meat can be cooked through.

Oxtail soup

I miss eating this. She had casually mentioned it before and I never thought that she'll really prepare this. She came with a rather big pot of this, actually. It was quite a hit amongst the others. Piping hot soup filled with potatoes, tomatoes, succulent beef chunks.... Dip some french loaf into this, on that rainy evening... Shiok!

...Guess she felt the need to contribute something for her first and only (currently) grandchild.

Fruit 'cocktail'

To me, a party doesn't feel complete without a bowl of this. Add on some longans/lychees and even sea coconut (a hit with the elders), squeeze some calamansi and dump in the ice.

Voila! The modern fruit punch (literally).

So there you have it. My son's birthday party, which turned out to be a tad 'grander' than initially anticipated. Many thanks to all involved. Fatimah, if you're reading this, tell your mum that I can never thank her enough! :)

Friday, December 17, 2010

Ordered the 1.5kg ice-cream cake from Swensen's. "Pirates Ahoy" from their Cooline Design selection. It was such a headache, choosing the designs.

I eventually realise that my 1 year old knows NUTS about whatever is on the cake (he hardly look at it, even) so I chose a design that I personally like. I thought that those cute lil' bits on the cake are toys that I can distribute to the other kids. Turns out, they are actually icing. PIPED icing. :P

I chose the ever popular Sticky Chewy Chocolate and the Cookies n Cream flavour to go along. Reminds me of their Mudpie actually.

Now about these ice-cream cakes.

I opt for the 2-5pm delivery slot and request that it be delivered closer to 5pm. They called me to say that they can't abide my request and that the cake can last up to 6hr after its packing, i.e. at 1pm.

Upon confirmation, they called again to say that the cake need to be removed from its cooler box 1-1.5 hr prior to cutting.

I tot' of having the ceremony at 7.30pm, so I took it out of the foam box (with the dry ice-layer on top) at 6pm. There are some bits of dry ice at the bottom tray. Should have removed that one, too (more on that later).

Due to some slight hiccups, the cake-cutting was eventually done at 8pm. Oh, did I mention that I can't seem to find any knife? Guess, Swensen's didn't give any, eh? Yeah, 2 hours of thawing, rite? And yet the centre of the cake still remain a block of hard, frozen cream. The first 1-2cm was nicely soft, all right. But that centre portion seemed almost impenetrable!

I eventually got a real kitchen knife and gave a supposedly strong man (b'dae boy's dad) the task of carving the cake out for distribution. Even then, it still took him some effort.

Despite all that, the cake's texture felt pretty good on the tongue, actually. Everyone else gave the thumbs up. However, I should have moved it into a tray or a platter. For it start to melt rapidly afterwards and dripped into a pool of milkshake. An expensive milkshake at that.

If you ask me, whether I'll ever order an ice-cream cake again? Err... Maybe just small one. Not for kiddos. Or dine in and order the birthday surprise. Or simply get the mud pie.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

A popular culture within the Malay (initially the Javanese) community, to commemorate one’s birthday with this nice treat.

The red/brown portion is sweet due to gula melaka (palm sugar), while the white one is salty (doused with salted coconut milk). Maybe there’s some kinda’ significance, as to the colour and contrasting tastes but I have no idea what it is.

This bowl here is for my son’s 1st birthday, according to the Islamic Hijrah calendar - on New Year, 1 Muharram.

Monday, December 06, 2010

Nowadays, I've seemed to have gotten over my fascination for kway tiao (flat rice noodles) and moved on to the very humble bee hoon (rice vermicelli) .

From Sinar Bahru Muslim Seafood. Save for the fact that this is one of the (not many) eateries near my office, I wouldn't always frequent this place. Food's mediocre. And the standard has pretty much dropped. Besides, I can't understand how anyone can cook squids till' the consistency of rubber. Seriously.

Bah!

Fried Fish Noodle

After my bad experience with this dish previously, I was very careful when making my order this time.

This is a totally different stall. Although this was also at a Banquet outlet, this one here at the Raffles Hospital branch prepare a version that I much prefer. With deep fried egg, no bittergourd and we can choose our preferred noodles.

But upon after carrying the bowl of piping hot soup to the table, I noticed that she missed out the milk. I’m fine with that.

When I carefully tried to dig out some fish (I don’t want to break the poached egg yolk inside) before snapping some pics, I found out that there’s NONE. Fried fish noodles with NO fish. Definitely short-changed, there. Grrr….!

So I brought the bowl back to her and informed her of the error. She took a pair of tongs and ROUGHLY dug around for the NON-EXISTENT fish pieces, thus breaking my dear egg and making a mess of my soup! My poor egg yolk!!!!

It’s bad enough that I missed out on eating my half-cooked poached egg because it got cooked thouroughly when sitting in the hot soup for too long. To have it broken?!

My colleagues told us that the plain milk flavour is the best so we chose just that and we had fresh fruits to go with it for a more refreshing palate.

We had the 'standard' aka large size, which is sufficient for sharing between 2 persons. My colleague had a whole bowl to himself, though. Then again, he's... well, different.

The ice was so fine, it melts nicely on the tongue. And the milk taste wasn't that overpowering. I had thought that the mango would have been the perfect pairing for this but it came out with a flat, sweet taste. Very one-dimensional. The strawberries were nicely tart and sweet at the same time and the flavours mingle really well with the milk ice.

On the fresh fruits also have bits of aloe vera jelly in them. Really, really refreshing on a hot weather!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

We're often at loss as to what have for lunch. We always made a mad gamble to head blindly to a certain location and decide on the last minute, where we'll be dining at.

Initially, we meant to head to Parkway Parade. Then a colleague decided to just dine at the Marine Parade hawker centre. After which, another colleague recalled that Charco's had just moved into this area.

Entrance...

From the multi-storey carpark, that is. Back door into the foodcourt which brings you right to Charco's stall (hence that label on the door?).

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My order.

Choice of salads: (clockwise from bottom) potato salad, Greek salad & Caesar's salad. The potato salad is kinda' plain, actually. But nice, nevertheless. I love the sour-y vinaigrette used in the Greek salad. Aside from the cucumbers & capsicums, there's also some chunks of feta cheese. Yum!

As soon as I know that I'm heading here, I've set my mind on ordering their ribs. Aside from the one time at Breeks, I've never really had BBQ ribs anywhere else.

However, I wasn't sure if I want the regular ribs meals, which will come with only either chips, creme potato and peas. I had seen their salad display and I KNOW I WANT them.

Only when my colleague placed his order for this, do I realise there's such an option. However, the ribs had appeared pretty large in the picture and I fear that they'll be too much.

Turns out, they already conveniently cut the ribs up upon serving so we can easily nibble or slice, piece by piece.

Rack of Ribs + 3 Salads - $15.10

My colleague had a similar order, with different varieties of salads.

Since the ribs used is from lamb meat, the 'gamey' scent is pretty much inevitable (although I personally think that using rosemary does help a bit). My colleague, the foodie was griping so much about that. And the fact that the meat was not fall-off-the-bone kind of tender.

I asked him what the usual ribs are like (read: pork). He went on to glorify the tenderness, how meaty and definitely not 'gamey'.

I told him straight on that I don't have much of a choice, have I? It's either lamb of beef. And beef ribs tend to be tough and dry. Beside, I'm fine with this scent since we do get it when we wallop the beef/bone steak anyway.

Honestly, I like the ribs here. The BBQ marinade made the meat slightly crispy at the edges and leave a somewhat sweet aftertaste. The meat is tender enough such that we don't have a tough time chewing. Makes it all the more fun to just pick up each piece with our fingers and nibble on the meat and lick the sauce off the bones.

Gonna check out the seafood salad & creme potato the next time I'm here.

Hawaiian Meal - $8.50

Another colleague's order. Pineapple fritters, chips and 1/4 chicken.

The chicken here is the Charco's chicken, which is the one marinated with herbs. Another version would have been the Portugese chicken, which is supposedly spicy.

I didn't really try the chicken so I can't comment on its texture. Except that I got a large piece of the skin and it was crispy! However, the flavor seem a tad... mild. Maybe because this is the herb-y version. Not sure about the spicy, Portuguese one, though.

The chips here seem to be sticks cut from an actual potato, reminding me of those served with orders of 'Lamb chop' at atIndian 'mamak' stalls.